The Bride of Edward Cullen
by SinisterSisterhood
Summary: Evil, AU, OOC Bella is less than thrilled with her new vampire life and seeks violent revenge! A blondie/goldenmeadow collab and joint FIRST PLACE WINNER of Les Femmes Noires Contest. Fuckhot summary inside. Enter at your own risk.


**Les Femmes Noires One-Shot Contest**

**Title: The Bride of Edward Cullen**

**Your pen name: SinisterSisterhood (a collab between goldenmeadow and blondieakarobin)**

**Characters: Bella and the Cullens, among others**

**Disclaimer: Do we look like SM? No. She owns twilight – we just turned out the lights. **

**To see other entries in Les Femmes Noires Contest, please visit the C2 page:** **www (dot) fanfiction (dot) net/community/Les_Femmes_Noires/73127/**

**Summary: When Edward reneges on his promise to 'try' and changes Bella without testing the sexual waters, she emerges revamped bloodthirsty, bitter, and bitchy. The Cullens reap the rewards of her perpetual PMS in lethal, dead funny,and disgusting ways. Don't mess with the Virgin Vamp!

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_Authors' Notes:  
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_**Rie:** This is my first collab and I am ridiculously excited to be doing this with Robin! My twin, I thought she was all sweet, certainly never light, and a reaper of gorgeous angst. She's that and more; quite frankly, I'm a bit scared. Don't be fooled by 'blondie', she has a twisted, raven winged heart and a very tarnished halo. _

_**blondie:** Who would have thought that my angsty Edward and Rie's hush puppy Rebelward could bring us together to write Evil Kill Bill Bella? Rie stabs, I twist the blade. I spill blood, she splatters it around the room. The result: a Bella you definitely don't want to cross...and two women spending night after black-hearted night cracking our knuckles over our keyboards and cackling evilly._

_Quick thanks to **Viola Cornuta** for taking this bitch by the horns and taming her, as much as she allowed (and for __Ethel Merman).  
And to **LaViePastiche** for you timely Italian help!_

_**To faithful blondie readers: **This is a huge departure from my regular writing, so heed the Mature rating and enter at your own risk._

_**To faithful goldenmeadow readers: ** Meh._

**_Happy Halloween!_****

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**The Bride of Edward Cullen**

If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

I'd heard that parable more times than I could count. Math and science may have been my strong suit, but unrequited lust had erased any semblance of wisdom on my part.

I should have known better. There's a reason fairytales are only for children – they never come true. Like a toddler, I'd dreamed, hoped, believed the fantasy. Now I was living the nightmare, I could see every glaring misstep, every juvenile decision on my part – but I wasn't the only one to blame.

And I'd make sure every single person responsible for my hell would share my punishment, and much, much more.

_**~~Un**_**: Wed and Undead~~**

Garbed in a pale turn-of-the-century custom-dyed and draped gown as befitted the soon-to-be bride of Edward Cullen, I walked down the aisle.

A trembling smile mirrored my quaking palm clasped hard to Charlie's elbow. The epitome of 'blushing bride,' I stumbled and scuffed my way toward my destiny. Little did I know my destination was to become a sacrificial altar.

The wedding itself meant nothing to me. Little more than words uttered. Minor verbs and agreeable concessions to get me closer to the thing I wanted most.

Edward's body.

_Of course_, I loved him. However, it was not lost on me that he had twisted my desires to gain the thing he had eschewed for more than a century.

A wife.

Really, all I wanted was _to_ _mate_, not assume the title.

Frippery, frivolity, and fine dining entertained the humans, vampires and wolves in attendance. The crowd danced and swayed and dipped around us, but amidst it all I steeped myself in fantasies of our wedding night to come.

Every icy touch, every chilling breath on my neck birthed a new vision of how Edward would fulfill his promise to consummate this charade of a wedding – how he would release the aching woman in me with his own untested manhood.

_I should have known better._

In full _gallant_ form, yet again, one more _fuckless_ time, Edward pried me off him, so fearful his unyielding shaft would simply break his poor little human Bella in two with its girth, length, and lovely hardness. Without even an apology, Edward harnessed my arms and legs to the mattress and bade me sleep.

I thought the submissive was supposed to have the power! Completely and seductively under his control, the chill in the room that sat squat like a fat manifested elephant was his frigidness. I was left alone, empty, and unconscionably horny, _still_.

This was _not_ what I signed up for.

"_Just wait until I turn you, Bella!"_ In the back of my rushed, randy, frantic dreams, Edward's words angered me anew.

The man had better have indecent, scandalous, unbelievable boudoir skills to get me to this point – _turned on_ to the edge of pain and explosive with eighteen months of chaste touches and scant foreplay – just to make me wait _another_ two weeks!

I chuffed, huffed, tugged away from his cold-ass Mr. Snow Miser torso. Well, at least that brawny bit of him was bare. But what was the point?

Miserably aroused, constantly frustrated, I endured our honeymoon like the naïve pigeon I was. Just mooning me was out of the question. Fuck honey.

Check that – NO fucking OR honey.

It was all _eggs this_ and _eggs that_ and _Bella, you look hungry, let me make you an omelet._ Jesus, what was I? An orphaned, underfed child? Sloppy sunny-side-up eggs just looked like what could possibly pass as vampire ejaculate; yellow and yokey.

Guessing the fowl that had produced the slime oozing off my fork had seen more cock than I had, I counted the hours, minutes and seconds until we would return to the mainland. To borrow one of Edward's banalities, this was entirely ridiculous. I wasn't even allowed to screw my own husband!

I wondered, if while I was sleeping not so peacefully, Edward broke out his sparkly dick and masturbated like a sex-fiend over my slumbering form.

Finally, it was with nearly climactic relief I accompanied Edward off our 'fun and bonding' hideaway. _What I wouldn't give for a little bondage._

Back in Forks, I was raring to go.

Hoping to entice lily-white Edward to finally man up and do the deed before he literally bit the bullet, I dressed in scanty lacy lingerie for my turning. Like a little girl waiting for Prince Charming's kiss, I imagined it to be appropriate dress for such an auspicious occasion.

Shoulda' worn my fucking Cons and scrappy thriftstore jeans.

With a peck of his lips and a slash of his teeth, I was ripped from humanity like an old bandage.

The hellfire that shunted through me gutted my limbs with a swarm of white-hot incisions! Feasted from my throat to my breasts to my thighs and then, like the fucking devil this thing was, it turned inside and roasted my organs on its agonizing spit! Liver, spleen, stomach, kidneys, brain, soul, and lastly, my heart each incinerated. Galumping and speeding and careering right the fuck out of my chest that pounded up and up and up off the hospital gurney Carlisle had so _thoughtfully_ supplied.

I screamed and careened and howled and clawed pure air throughout it all.

Three long days.

And I thought my honeymoon was bad.

Caught in the lashings of brimstone and caterwauling torture, I writhed in unending agony. Through it all Edward hummed that fucking infuriating tune to me – the one he'd been angsting over since we'd returned from Italy.

I wanted to yank my ears from my head and yack all over his immaculately polished penny loafers. Van Gogh'd had the right idea.

Of course my ears would just crawl back up and reattach themselves. The torment would be never-ending.

In small yarns of time that tasseled some odd, completely fucked up reworking of me, back into _me_, I awoke. Not from sleep but from death. Not with bleary eyes, but with crystalline vision. And a throat full of unending magma.

Thirst like I'd never felt picked at the scabs that had to be lining my esophagus. Stinging, itching, burning, _consuming_ want took over my being. I had to stop it...to _feed _it.

Suddenly he was there, leaning over me, his eyes a hundred shades from canary to ochre. Through the pain I inspected Edward, seeing the truth for the first time. Had my human vision truly been so blind to his imperfections?

That which was perfect to faltering mortal eyes was much less so to our keen visual ability. Within a small fraction of my brain, I was boggled that Edward had ever found me attractive as a homely human. As a vampire I could see his Draculean faults easily instead of the untouched handsome man-boy I had fallen in love with. The pompous pompadoured ass had blemishes upon his jaw, eyes that were a might skewed, a nose that was crooked and hooked more than it had ever seemed before.

How much more defective had I appeared to him?

The thought went up in a poof of mental smoke when I swallowed my first mouthful of venom.

I screamed against lips that had lowered to mine.

"Bella, kiss me," he purred, as if sex could possibly compare to the bloodlust that ate like acid at every pore.

My head snapped up and crashed into his with the force of a pile driver. He stumbled back, his cranium rising unnaturally from his shoulders like a defeated Rock 'em Sock 'em Robot.

I was free!

The phone in his pocket rang in concert with one downstairs as a cry of "Edward, are you all right?" rose from below.

_Carlisle_.

Edward flopped and flailed, his hands searching blindly for the brain that had deserted them. The pounding of feet on the stairs matched the chattering of Edward's teeth as he desperately tried to telegraph the location of his head to his body.

Most amusingly, his convulsing body was not answering the SOS.

Knowing Carlisle's prime concern would be reassembling his first begotten, I grabbed the mussed mop of penny-ante hair and crashed through the third floor window.

Another swallow fanned the flames of my thirst, leaving my throat begging, _screaming _for warm, red relief.

Dangling from my fist, Edward's jaw worked silently.

"What's that?" I taunted. "Does your throat hurt, too? Maybe this will help soothe the smoldering." With an effortless heave, I sent his head, face first, into the river. Sinking immediately to the bottom, it was pushed along with the rest of the useless stones toward the Pacific. _Stupid blockhead. _

Burning...scorching...aching...I needed only one thing. _Blood_.

At first I ran mindlessly into the trees, ignoring the halo of flecks and rainbows that marked me for what I'd become, unaware I was being led...by my own human scent.

The sweet floral remnant pulled me away, a siren's call to the raging monster within. When the woods thinned and a house appeared, a new, richer, mouthwatering aroma encompassed me and made a swill of bitter toxin flood my mouth like deadly saliva. The blisters in my throat combusted like dynamite into an unheralded need to drown myself in the wetness; a need that mesmerized my feet to swifter motion.

The sound of a human pulse echoed in my ears as I passed the police car and threw open the door.

_Yes_.

I was met by the scratch of a chair against a worn linoleum floor and a strangled whisper... "Bella?"

_Oh, Yes._

Too eagerly my teeth found his neck, removing a huge swath of flesh in search of the straw leading from his heart to his head. I wanted to wail at the tragedy of so much sanguinary goodness spattering the floor, but the bliss of what I captured overwhelmed any urge to speak.

Nothing could've prepared me for the heavenly ecstasy of ingesting another's lifeforce...the experience defied description. How could I have ever been repulsed by such culinary goodness? Gulp after satisfying gulp, I emptied my human juice box. When the burn returned, an ember of what it once was, I threw him to the floor in disgust like no more than a sodden, crumpled, cardboard carton.

It was then I realized what I'd done.

On the table next to me lay rusted hooks, artificial insects, and spools of fishing line. The sink glittered with silvery scales and reeked of rotting fish. And at my feet lay a corpse...the body of a man for whom I'd more than once offered to trade my life.

Charlie.

I'd killed my own father.

_**~~Deux**_**: Undeadly Vengeance~~**

With Charlie's aftertaste lingering in my smoldering throat, my thoughts cleared.

Sickened, saddened, and yet sadistically satisfied, the mushroom cloud of my anger should have demolished the tiny kitchen.

Edward had promised to help, _promised_ to keep my monster in control – but just like he always had, he'd underestimated me. He'd _never _seen me as an equal, only as a child to be coddled. And now my father – a man I barely remembered – had paid for that arrogance with his life.

In a vindictive rage that made the infusion of Charlie's blood sing, I threw open the drawer below the phone. My father's love, his life might have been erased, but simple things, like the location of paper and pen resurfaced without effort. As did the scrawl of his handwriting.

"_Edward Cul_-" I scribbled, before dragging Charlie's body across the floor and smearing his bloody hand on the drawer. The note dropped like a feather next to his dead digits, an accusation from beyond the grave.

It wasn't enough. The furnace raged to life again, hearing living meals all around me. Sustenance wasn't all I desired...revenge tasted nearly as sweet.

Shining in the midst of the tackle and trifles littering the table was a polished cigarette lighter. Why it was there, I didn't know -- whether a tool in Charlie's arsenal against all things aquatic or a symptom of a closet cigar habit -- it would be put to a new use now.

Revenge.

I flipped the lighter open, testing the flame, restlessly fidgeting and unable to remain still as the novel insomniacal energy buzzed through me. It was the lettering on the side of the Zippo that illuminated my path.

Newton's Outfitters.

Barely containing the boil of overwhelming hunger, I raced three blocks over and four down as my plan took shape. Like the last house I'd visited, only one heart beat behind this door. Taking a deep breath, I knocked, leaving imprints of my knuckles in the wood. I had to rein in my new-found strength or a meal would be all I'd get here.

"Bella?" Mike Newton's face turned as white as mine, taking in the sight of my bloodied shirt and sallow skin. "God, what happened? Are you okay?"

I looked up at him, doe-eyed. "Mike, please, help me," I mewed, blowing my newly acquired predatory scent toward him.

"Uh...sure." Drooling and devastatingly dazzled...totally disgusting and unable to disguise his teenaged lasciviousness...not even trying in fact...he held the door wide, his gaze drifting from my awakening nipples to my firm ass as I entered.

_Excellent_.

Retribution cooled my incendiary thirst enough for me to spin my yarn, a fictitious tale of abuse and murder.

"Edward's a monster, he killed Charlie!" I sobbed, hiding my dry eyes behind my hands. "I don't know what to do."

His adrenaline and fear bloomed, the perfect foreplay. Edward had used sex as a weapon for so long, now it was my turn.

"What did he do to you?" Mike put a careful arm around my shoulders, recoiling at my icy skin.

"I don't know...I don't remember! Drugs, I guess," I whispered, pulling him closer with kid gloves lest I inadvertently crush an over-eager handful of his downy flesh. "I found Charlie in my kitchen...he's...he's..." I let my head just touch his shoulder, his palpitating jugular calling me. "I'm so cold, Mike. Please help me."

With effort he slipped from my grasp, claiming to fetch a blanket, but making a quick call to the police. I undid the top few buttons on my blouse with a quiet cackle, finding myself more than ready to let this ignorant boy have what Edward never would.

Mikey pretended to avert his eyes as I slipped out of my macabre outfit, loosely wrapping me in a stale blanket and a cloud of his loamy, musky aroma. A single expression of guilt left my unsuspecting pawn.

"Bella, you're married." His eyes lit on the scrap of gold still cluttering my finger.

With inhuman speed I erased Edward's graffiti from my person, rolling the gold and diamonds into a tiny tinny ball between my fingertips.

Letting the blanket fall, I licked my lips, catching the drops of venom trying to escape.

"He wouldn't touch, me, Mike. Marriage is just a word to him, that's all." I pouted, and fingered the clasp on my bra. My tits sprang free, aroused as much by Edward's absence as Mikey's straining fly. Multitasking never looked this good.

Revenge...blood...revenge...no, _blood_...it took much more effort to keep Mike alive than it took to coerce him to explore my body. Chivalry had no place in his vocabulary, and once he tasted the cloying ambrosia embodied in my stony skin, he was mine.

His mousse-drenched, spiky blond hair met the impermeable skin between my breasts, rebounding like shattered needles to fly about the chintz-filled living room.

Nursing, kneading, and nuzzling, he coated my breasts in warm, appetizing saliva, his tongue but a whisper against my virgin peaks.

My body warmed with his, and with a child-like eagerness, he slipped between my legs, undaunted by the cool, poisoned wetness waiting for him.

Without any preamble, his engorged – _venom flooded my mouth_ – erection brushed against my waiting entrance. With a deep breath he lurched, but didn't fill me. "God, Bella, you're so tight." His hips wiggled, using his poker of a cock to explore, not pleasure. "Didn't he...I mean...didn't you..." Quizzical, he speared at me again. "_I can't..._"

I'd been ignoring his inane mumblings, savoring the pre-sex he'd so easily given me. When he pulled away, my grip on his shoulders tightened. "What?!"

"Ow, Bella, that hurts." _Fucking simpering wussy._ "I can't, you're a virgin." His disbelief dulled my buzz...and stoked my thirst.

"So? I want to give this to you, Mike, not him. Please, take what I'm offering. I need you," I coaxed. In so many ways this did _not_ bode well for Mikey. Fucker was such a sissy he couldn't even breech my maidenhead? Gain my vadge badge? Take my virginity?

"No, you don't understand. It's not that I don't _want _to," his face turned a delicious shade of vermillion, "I CAN'T. I tried to...break through...but I can't."

"_I can't."_ How many fucking times would a man say that to me as I lay under him? But as Mike spewed Edward's mantra, his breath more appetizing than any vampire's, I realized his wasn't a denial but an apology.

Not "I won't"..."I CAN'T."

His physical inability became his epitaph. I pulled his head to the side so viciously that it almost snapped clean off. The taste of his worthless blood did little to ease my ire. He was soft, too soft, all sweet and melty, like a marshmallow over the flames of a boy scout's campfire.

As his body cooled, I chewed my lip, leaving tiny cuts that healed the second they appeared.

I was a virgin, and would be for eternity. Unchanging...EVER healing! Was this a cosmic joke? One of the reasons I wanted to become a vampire, since Edward had made it crystal clear he would not deflower me as a 'frail,' 'fragile,' 'breakable' human Bella, was for the endless sexin' that came part and parcel with no need to sleep. _First comes marriage, then comes turning, then comes Bella getting the living daylights fucked out of her by her everlastingly hard handsome husband._ _That_ was how it was supposed to go, _not_ like this.

Was that what got Edward off? Popping my cherry over and over and over again? No wonder he'd reneged on his promise to 'try'. Boy, he wasn't kidding when he'd personified himself as a monster, ad nauseum.

_Why hadn't I listened?_ Ah, yes, because of my harebrained pubescent hormones.

Throwing my latest victim off me, I spun around the house like a dervish, collecting every photo of me I could find. Yearbook pictures, group outings...there were more than I'd expected. Wadding them into a ball, I deposited them into my dead suitor's mouth. Even without naming Edward, blame would fall squarely on his shoulders, seeing this display. Another scathing accusation was complete.

Clad in one of the dead boy's t-shirts and a pair of his mother's Walmart-special jeans, I took one last look at the human who would have been my first lay, had I asked while I still sported a pulse. Now he was nothing more than a pitiable permanent layabout.

His bloodless, pock-marked face was anything but handsome. Even with newly discovered flaws, Edward was perfection compared to Mike's preened façade, proving Edward had always been such a fucking faker. He'd had to troll through the castoffs of the human populace to create his own Bride of Frankenstein? Apparently the port-a-prêt, ready-made chick vamps didn't cut the mustard._ God complex much_?

Bottom feeder.

He'd wanted to make me his, in the only way he was capable. Baiting me, promising to bed and mate me, Edward had created his own Princess Bride.

As you wish? _ Fuck. That._

Anger, bloodlust, and killing wishes belted through me.

And not just for humans, not solely for blood.

I'd watched my soul take flight on diaphanous wings at the urging of Edward and his antiquated accomplices.

Each and every one of the Cullens had a hand in killing me when all I really wanted was a fuck, some love that didn't hinge on the otherworldly.

I was turned, all right. Turned into a hated, hateful creature. I would be feared.

Oh, I wasn't going to kill them outright. Maiming, crippling them was much more akin to the interminable retribution I had in mind. At least for the Cullens. That pseudo-family full-up on their pious, prestigious, philanthropic do-gooder, goody-two-shoes reputation. Those perfidious pilferers of souls.

I waited til dark, until the remaining family -- minus fast fleeing Alice and Jasper whose combined fragrance of fear, cowardice, and guilt were nowhere to be found -- were running willy nilly to find me. Carlisle alone was left in the illustrious manse that was nothing more than just blue smoke and mirrors. Illusions.

Returning to the scene of the crime on the quietest of quiet feet lest I alert wary _Dad_, I looked blankly about the kitted-out operating room and felt nothing. A void where I was certain contrition and civility should have been.

Missing from the scene was Edward's beheaded body clacking around the floor like a chicken with its head cut off. I wondered where Carlisle had situated my headless husband, or if it was wandering the forest, a headless, horseless horror hoping to net its mislaid neurocenter.

Smirking brightly, unable to dim the brilliance of my lips, I swiveled to the mirror that narcissistic Alice had placed center stage in my twee makeshift OR.

Fiendishly sensual, with legs of an Amazon, high round tits, hair like a lion's mane and lips of such feminine vermillion I wanted to taste them myself, I was spellbound by my hemorrhagic eyes. I'd always favored red.

I didn't blush anymore, that was a given. Didn't feel flustered or flushed.

Utilizing my maddeningly melodious voice, I sing-songed throughout the echoing palatial interior, trailing gouges into the banister – because I could -- as I trawled to the bottom half of the house, "Oh, Carlisle? Carlisle? I know you're here."

Chuckling darkly, I heard him creep into the family room on the balls of his perfect size eleven feet. My supposed father. The patriarch who had cast the deciding vote to turn me into a vampire.

I strolled my fingertips along the mantle and warily watched the man himself enter the room. He nodded at me and stayed put in the entryway, waiting for me to speak.

_Passive aggressive asshole._

Tilting my head to the side so my shiny new locks brushed my pearlescent shoulder, I questioned Carlisle. "So, where is little Alice? What of Jasper? Everyone took off so suddenly I hardly had a chance to express my _undying_ gratitude."

Tapping his foot and jiggling his hand in his pocket, he frowned. "To be honest, Bella," I snorted, thinking _that would be a first_, "they raced up to Alaska for reinforcements. Your newborn nature is explosive, uncontainable, and we felt it prudent to have a few more hands at the ready."

_Hands, hmmm, now there's a thought._

"_We_ thought it prudent? Or Alice did?" I narrowed my volcanic eyes to gauge Carlisle's reaction.

Holding on to his idea of Alice's altruism, he countered, "Well...she suggested it. But we all agreed." _Bet you did, in your round-table democracy_...I knew _all _about that!

I click clacked across the floor like Edward's formerly Morse-coding teeth. I was heartened to see elegant, fine Carlisle shake a bit in his boots. "_Hmmm, _are you sure about that, _Dad_? Are you absolutely certain that Alice was looking out for you all instead of just for numeros uno and dos? Huh? Cat got your tongue?" I stepped closer and widened my gaze, "Want to phone a friend?"

In a very undignified manner, Carlisle sputtered a bit, and his saliva-venom-goo contaminated his fucking textbook lips.

This was turning into good old-fashioned fun! "Let's consider, shall we, Alice's precog tendencies. Don't you think it's the slightest bit possible she's really a lily-livered turncoat? Inevitably, _supposedly, _she had to have seen things going not to plan at the last moment. I mean, really, you did see what 'happened' to Edward, right?"

Very undignified indeed, Carlisle gulped like a guppy.

I continued to goad him, high on the power I felt scaring the shit out of my father-in-law turned supernatural grandsire. "So, she's run off with rutting Jasper at her backside like a Shitzu that can't be shaken off. Am I right? Did the self-serving sylph even think to warn the rest of you?"

Blenching, retching a little, his smooth, polished voice turning the teensiest bit hollow, Carlisle shuddered as truth settled over him like a suffocating unfamiliar duvet. Tipping his world up on its axis.

And this was just the beginning.

"You know what they say -- _Never bet against Alice_ -- eh?" I rolled my eyes heartily and laughed robustly. "You really should have booted her off the island years ago, but I guess I can take of that for you..._later."_

Feigning a quick shift of emotions, demonstrating credible instability, I put on my best lost-sad-lonely little girl face and false-sobbed into my indelicate hands – all the while hiding a huge grin. "You see, _this _is what you've done to me! You've all made me into a cruel beast!"

I heard his assured footsteps against the wood resin of the floor, taking the bait I dangled in front of his fake blue-blood nose, "Carlisle, what have I done? Edward? Mike? _Oh god, Charlie too!_" Tapping my genuine guilt over the latter death made my act that much more believable. It was fairly easy to bamboozle naïve Dr. Cullen, always so willing to trust the best in people despite the truth of murderous intent.

Ever the un-bleeding heart, Daddy Carlisle took me in his arms, rubbed my shoulders that shook with mirth in lieu of remorse, and soothed plaintively, "_Shhh, _Bella. Don't worry, my dear, we'll help you."

I slinked back, catching his hands in my titanium grip. His placating words, his suspect virtuous blamelessness rankled a fresh peal of angry laughter from me, and this time I let it loose while I coiled my unbreakable fingers more tightly around his. An inescapable boa constrictor, I snared dear Daddy and crowed delightedly!

Immobilized, he shook uselessly. "Bella, please! We were only doing what we thought was best, what _you_ wanted!" He tried to free his digits with an ineffectual tug.

"You think I wanted _this_? Was I so unfortunate as human being that you believed I could not possibly be happy in mortal skin? That I wanted to live forever, minus a soul, simply so I could serve as Edward's eternal sacrificial virgin?"

Outside, I heard the scratch of a tweed pantsuit, the scrap of patent leather pumps on hoary ground. Esme was on her way back. The next course in my vengeful feast approached.

I made quick work of ripping Carlisle's hands from their joining with his arms. The crush-throb-juicy-iron screech of metallic flesh and bone tearing was quite the symphony, _Clair de Lune_ aside.

_What's a surgeon, a savior of the masses, without his hands?_

Like he'd done so many times before to countless patients, I cauterized the oozing wound...by dropping his wriggling digits into the glowing coals of the open fire in the parlor. Carlisle screamed; apparently the connection hadn't been completely broken when I'd hacked those appendages from his body.

_Oh dear._

Lying on the floor, his handless stumps waving toward the door, he made an apt welcome home present for Mommy Dearest.

True to form, Esme ran straight for her pained, bellowing mate. _Christ, what a cry baby he is._

"Carlisle, _Carlisle!_ My love, who did this to you?" she whined.

I cleared my throat. "Uh, standing right here, Esme."

She winced and drew back from Carlisle, and away from me on swaying, not at all graceful legs.

Suddenly faint of heart, my mother-in-law gave me the best idea ever!

All weird elegance, I catwalk stalked to Esme cowering behind Carlisle's winged chair. The wood and leather gave first as I reached through the fashionable recliner. Her blouse, pale peach as suited a lady, her tissue silvery and pliable, her sternum of stone-soft bones to the strength of my digging-deep fingers, all parted way.

_Squelch, squelch_. Her heart was already dead, but held acres of yucky venom inside. It fit the palm of my hand, that tiny thing. This barren mama bear allegedly lived by her heart. Well, no more.

I'd gutted her of the thing that defined her. Yanked it out and promptly threw it in the fireplace to join Carlisle's ashen fingers.

Eyes wide and black as charcoal for a change, Esme leaked poison from the gaping wound in her chest. Her ribs stood out like I'd taken a crowbar to them. Hieronymus Bosch would have been mighty proud of the disturbing tableau she presented, cowering behind the broken furniture.

_Poor thing._ But it wasn't as if she needed the useless organ.

Dusting my hands off on the Alice-bought designer brand jeans I donned after playtime with Mommy and Daddy, I exited the house.

Lo and behold, Emmett and Rosalie were strolling back, having thrown in the towel after five measly hours. I almost felt insulted I wasn't worth more of their time.

Watching my approach cautiously, I could see the twin urges to pursue me and challenge me to a good spot of arm wrestling working across Emmett's boyish, childish, open visage.

The big lug had a soft spot in my heart; after all, he was simply a young, brawny man cut down in the prime of his life. Simple as an open book with no evil motivations or intentions. At least he was true; sex and sports were what he was about, and I couldn't help but appreciate all the pointed jibes and jokes he had employed to throw Edward's own manhood into question. I was about condone that, give him a free pass, but then he spoke.

"God, Bella, what'd Alice do to ya'?" He snickered at the Killers t-shirt I'd selected, but then gawked at my burgeoning breasts. The swell in his pants was testament to my new, beauteous Bella-shell.

"But it looks good," he hastily added. "No wonder Edward waited. The man's got the patience of a saint." His low whistle strafed the air, as pointed as the telltale hard-on in his trousers.

I understood, _now_, why Emmett was aping about and guffawing like the baboon he was. Pornographer extraordinaire, he didn't even bother to hide his appreciation of another Cullen missus to ogle. I snickered back a chuckle, my first and only, when Rosalie cracked his skull.

His tongue protruded as he sprawled backward, and I easily snatched it from his mouth. There'd be no more jokes about my sex life in front of me or behind my back. With a flick of my Bic, the put-downs, the innuendo, the fucking _stupidity _ended...forever. Like cow tongue to a skillet, the budded feeler sizzled and shrank.

_More's the pity, no more cunnilingus for Rosalie, and we all knew much she enjoys a good eating-out._

Allowing him to lumber and stagger past, mute as Babe the Blue Ox, I pasted on one of my killer kilowatt grins and came toe-to-toe with Rosalie.

_Rosalie, Rosalie._ Incongruously, conceited and vainglorious Rosalie had been the only one to try to talk me out of the inane adolescent stupidity that had me convinced I needed to be a vampire too.

I almost kicked her in the shin, but I held back. "Thanks" didn't make it past my lips either.

Rosalie was huffing and puffing through her nostrils. She remained pissed – _that was a given where she was concerned_ – undaunted, and I had to admire her chutzpah. Could I blame her? I was more Rubenesque than she could ever hope to be. In fact, instead of the tall slim model I had previously purveyed, Rosalie resembled little more than a preying mantis, which was entirely appropriate considering how shittily she treated her mate.

Rosalie was not worth my undistilled rage. And nearly garnered my admiration.

Her less than threatening growl was interrupted by a new screech from my fingerless father. "Esme, dear Esme..." he howled.

"Oh, guys? Best get ready to clean up a nasty mess in there. Got a little crazy with the folks," I chortled, and walked on. No one followed.

Once on the winding drive that led away from the brightly lit house and the screams of the anguished and the grotesque, I drummed the pads of my fingertips against my perfect chin. I needed to bring out the big guns for Alice and _Jazz --_ I curled my shoulders, spread and twinkled my fingers in a perfect rendition of '_jazz hands_,' so much more affective than air quotes for the smarmy scarred soldier.

Reinforcements were what I needed; my own elite guard.

_Jacob_.

Hotter than all Hades within the wolfish raffish confines of his behemoth body, and horny as just about any teenage boy in the Forks vicinity for me, he'd do whatever I asked with no more than a tinkle of feminine laughter and batting of my newly lengthened, full eyelashes. So easy it made me laugh. Recently promoted to Alpha stance, top dog so to speak, I could count on Jacob and his mangy minions to do my bidding.

After all, this wasn't _my_ fault...it was _Edward's_.

At the rez, Jacob spun deliriously in my web, but tried to hold back his aroused delight at the new image I made. "Bella! What the hell did he do to you?"

And under his breath, "_I kinda like it."_

Simpleton.

With a click of my fingers and a nod of my head, I had my army of animals in place. We ran straight to Alaska unbeknownst to dear Alice.

Their misty, tribal, tidal, dream-weaver minds cast a shady spell over Alice's presageous predictions. Cloaked amongst the lycanthropes' damp, stinky, matted-fur fleshy forms, I held tactical surprise on my side.

Leah cackled almost as much as I did when we neared the defected duo, up to our knees in snowdrifts. The heat from the wolves' bodies melted the flurried hills faster than the sun scorched a Sno-Cone on a hot Arizona afternoon.

Sending my mutty minions forward with a warning to dissect all they wanted, so long they kept the terrible two alive and untorched until I made my fashionably late entrance, I went rogue to the mountains in search of the magnificent blood bowl of manly lumberjacks stripping the earth of her trees. _Fucking parched again! This was a dammed nuisance._

At least my insatiable thirst would provide Alice a diverting vision as the wolves stalked her.

Replete with savory, masculine, spicy, cedar-like engorgement, I entered the hairy cluster an hour later. _Good morning, Denali!_ The satisfying crunch of fluffy snow-turned-sleet under the heat of my fido-fighters announced my arrival as I loped to Alice. She trembled like a rabid squirrel when I circled her and Jasper. Or, _more appropriately, _legless and armless Matt and I-lene. Useless limbs were strewn everywhere, some being peed on, some getting buried in shallow graves, some playing the rope in games of tug-o-war between my canine cohorts. It was a rather beautiful sight.

My mannequin-esque siblings' heads were still attached and functioning...wailing, in fact...and for that I was thankful. I quite liked to goad gypsy-Alice and emo-Jasper before taking my final leave of them.

"Surprise!" I exclaimed to a symphony of grunts and yips.

Ever the protective mate, Jasper rocked and wriggled in an attempt to reach his equally incapacitated wife. "Leave her alone, Bella. It's me you want, not her." Remorse cascaded over me like snow.

"Guilting me into sparing you won't work, Bro. You forget I know the guilt of Oedipus, in large part because of you and my short-sighted Sis, here. Care to take another spin on the emotional roulette before you feel my justice?"

His defeat rose up and slapped me, but again I turned it against him, pondering my endless, loveless existence. To have hopes of eternal happiness and joy ripped away and replaced by unending thirst and frustration was the greatest of losses.

"You're not going to kill us," Alice said. The most proficient prevaricator of us all, I couldn't discern any emotion in her statement – not confidence, defeat, nor fear.

"Of course not."

Having coerced, plotted, inveigled all of us with her predestined thoughts into thinking Bella-vamp was a foregone conclusion, Alice would reap what she'd sown. Not to mention all the plucking, waxing, flat-ironing and general distaste for my comfortable yet hippy-sexy wardrobe! The boys had certainly never complained about my clothing. I wanted to kick mini-me's ass, but I'd have to flip her over to do that.

No, she deserved something more symbolic, more significant than an old-fashioned whoopin'. I might not be able to scrape and scratch the clairvoyance from her mind, but I sure as hell could steal her vision.

Lunging to the left then right, unnecessarily since _I-lene_ couldn't move but for a wiggle, I jagged like lightning with clawed hands that cranked Alice's saucer-wide amber eyes effortlessly from her skull! _Squish, squish._ Just like fish guts.

Her screams were, of-fucking-course, unworldly and damn near ear-splitting, and as if connected, Jasper's matched in harmonizing agony. Satisfying nonetheless.

_That_ was fun, watching Alice blunder back off her denuded torso like a blind amoeba unseeingly seeking Jasper/Matt.

I couldn't resist adding to her affliction, giggling hysterically as she fumbled about, and called out, "But, Alice, I thought we were going to be such good friends?"

And the hits kept on coming. "Hey, _Ally_, I think I'm going to call you _Ali-Gore_ from now on! You sure could do with a makeover, hon. What? Not funny? _Humph,_ you're kind of out of you _aliment_, huh?"

Giddy with power and a glutton for punishment, I embraced the sadness filling the little clearing and turned. I had bigger fish to fry. My giggled faded into sobs, thinking of Charlie.

Ah, dear, sad, tortured Jasper. In limbo, minus those pesky limbs.

Through the sorrow I surveyed him. An infantryman already brought off his knees. No, his knees had been brought off _him_! A laugh of pure hilarity found purchase at the back of my throat as I observed his groveling, knowing he wanted nothing more than to be stamping and stomping and hopping like a thrown bull rider trying to evade the goring horns of my vicious vendetta.

Seeing him in all his immortal glory, beneath the freaky Ethel Merman 'do' that had always been a deal-breaker in my estimation, Jasper's otherwise pretty piecemeal flesh was marred by a myriad of livid, wavery scars. Making him look like…_well_, the Un-Walking Dead. _Imagine that._

Tearing myself from the paisley patterns decorating his snowy skin, I returned to the task at hand. Jasper had stolen six months of my life over a simple fucking paper cut. I figured my ire was quite just, all things considered.

Falling back as I happily strolled by, Jacob and his militia ranked behind me, forming an ellipse of furry hulking masses, Jasper's arms and legs like raw-hide chew toys in hanging from their gargantuan maws.

Not that I need backup since the fucker was an immobile lump, but _what the hell._ It set the scene.

Ignoring his pitiful keening, I gripped that strong chiseled lower jaw of his and cleaved it clean out of his mouth! His terror raced through me, recalling a faint human memory. It was the Blair Witch Project all over again! But far better this time, because_ I _was the witchy thing. And I was starting to feel splendidly spooky.

There'd be no more biting for Jasper, so he wouldn't have to worry about his incessant craving anymore. Really, it was sort of a favor, a gift, so to speak, from his wicked sister-in-law.

I did stop, for a moment, a millisecond, to pity whey Alice. How she would eventually, once she pulled herself together, discover with blind fingers what Jasper couldn't tell her. Having to kiss that meaty mess for the rest of her endless life.

_For shame._

Igniting the collection of facial features, Jacob got all up on my back, he and his slobbery pack, his glossy black snout seeping and his stiletto fangs salivating, the beastly incarnation of the human boy I knew and would always deny.

His eardrum-shattering whine telegraphed what his lupine form couldn't say.

"I know you wanted to kill them. Don't forget your promise, Alpha dog."

He shook, sending bits of foamy drool into the trees, a reverse rain.

"You promised. They live, Edward lives, and I'll keep your pack...tribe," _...whatever..._ "safe from the Volturi."

With a sigh he nodded his horse-sized head.

Stroking his matted slaver encrusted fur, I whispered in his ear so he could hear me above Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum who were still bawling in the background. "Jake, why don't you go pay a visit to the Denalis'. I hear they are succubi most sensual, and all about the dogs."

_Buh-bye._

_**~~Trois**_**: Death and Divorce~~**

Five down, one to go, and one left standing; Rose, who had been extended a lifeline from me. The odds were no longer even, not _prix fixe_. And _damn, _I was thirsty again. Newton been a waster in the sack, so I wasn't surprised his blood was as anemic as his complexion. Regrettably, my unbaked Alaskan lumberjacks hadn't staved off my hunger any more effectively. Enough with the toying, I needed to eat. Where best to find fresh young blood than in my homegirls, my pals, my best buds? Time for some girl power-ade!

Back to Forks I flew as if with wings. Born aloft by unquenchable thirst, I feigned an angel in the day, a wraith at night.

Arriving in the city of both my birth and death, I strolled to the little cottage that housed my nemesis under the perpetually gray skies. Lauren opened the door before I even knocked – as if she was waiting behind the transoms for visitors to come calling.

_Sad, needy girl._

Her voice was like nasal drip as she welcomed me into her Country Kitchenified house, hoping to cash in on my notoriety as the "missing victim" in the spate of homicides the likes of which Forks had never seen. She had no idea she was about to join the investigation, and not in a good way.

Stepping my fingers over her trendy Hollister hoodie in a gesture she took as adoration, I thought on insipid Lauren, a bit. I mean, really, who needed an excuse to off her? Unencumbered by regard for anyone but herself, she was a bitch, pure and simple.

With my fingers curled into the zipper of her emblemed sweatshirt, I put on my best sparkly smile, complete with newly minted Zoom-white teeth.

_Drip drip drip._ Bla Bla Blauren's words like a leaky faucet, trickling fresh fury into me, "God, Bella! Did you let Alice play Barbie again? The police are looking for her, too, you know."

_Ha, they won't find my sightless sister._

I wafted a sweetened exhalation in Lauren's direction, to no effect. The blond bimbo was supposed to be silent, dazzled, hypnotized. What the hell?

Finally she took a breath and noted my blood-tinged eyes for the first time. My hunger must have penetrated her shell of conceit. "You look different, Bella." She tried to pull away. "I think we should get you to the police."

_Wrong answer, Lauren__**.**_

The closer I got to her, the more rough, chafed, damaged she became. _Gross._ Her poorly maintained exterior wouldn't deter me from what pulsed beneath, however.

Her babbling became a grating screech as she as struggled uselessly against my unyielding grasp. Cracking her neck to the side, I sank my razor teeth into her pulpy neck that was mottled from too many visits to Mystic Tan.

Blood spilled down my throat, and I glugged it in. _Gulp gulp gulp._

My stomach roiled with the flavor of pride, greed, envy, and artificial orange oompa loompa dayglow tan.

_Too bitter. This blonde's blood isn't any more satisfying than Mike's too-sweet fluid._

Strolling out of her house, using my cuff to wipe the last morsels of not-quite-right bloody soup from my lips, I walked two blocks and cut left, jetted over a picket fence and landed at Jessica's back door.

Slovenly and messy, Jessica only answered after three hard knocks. Bubbly, _boring_, she remarked, "I'm liking the new look Bella! And the bad ass attitude, veeery Mean Girls meets Heathers! Am I Heather One or Heather Two?"

Knocking her back as I staked out her kitchen, I remembered all the wrong that was Jessica. Her unsightly, gaudy, gauche, fuchsia prom dress that spilled dimpled cellulose cleavage was a crime against humanity alone. False intentions and fake friendships made a full tally.

Strikes one, two, and three. _You're out!_

Hints of Botox and silicone made my nose sting when I held her, almost tenderly, to drain her dry. Her caterwauling was transcendent! Mellifluous even; I was so pleased she'd taken her time to study the scales in Chorus.

It was a tad anticlimactic though, to be honest. I needed more.

I swear to hell, she tasted of the hard shellac of AquaNet hairspray, cheap dimestore-bought grannyish Charlie perfume, and plasticine bits of jealousy.

_Not quite right. _Nothing could compare to Charlie; his flavor had been ripe and perfect. 'Course my father was the sweetest to sample and simply divine, a potluck of tangy oranges and freshly milled coffee beans all rolling out on curtains, falling dripping dropping swags of yummy crimson blood – _my blood _after all. Flesh of my flesh, my host. The porridge of his blood, lumpy with clots and steamy with heat, had been _just fucking right. _

"Bella, please stop."

The voice was a whisper over the fading screams and dying heartbeat. Crushed velvet against broken glass.

Edward.

Reassembled and repentant, he approached the house. But it was too late for Goldilocks number three, and I finished her off with a loud slurp.

Warily, my eternal husband entered, looking untouched and immaculately put together. Neither a seam out of place nor a ghost of a scar from the re-joining of his neck to his torso marred his appearance. In fact, his head had reattached itself so well, all evidence of damage had been erased...just as my maidenhead would re-seal itself, should it ever be ruptured. Quite the little miracle drug, that venom.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked. Honestly puzzled, Edward's lack of insight had me worried for his mental faculties. Perhaps those headless hours _had _contributed to a little brain death; his neurons firing off blanks to the air just like his venom-cum would likely do, if given half the damn chance!

Still smelled the same though, of freshly mowed lawns, honey, musky soil. With just a hint of pond scum from his _heady_ trip down the river like a leaky bobber freed from its fishing line.

Ignoring him, I positioned dessicated Jessica on the sofa and clicked on the TV. Her gaping mouth and bulging eyes matched the _Halloween_ marathon that flashed on the screen – only the bloody indentation of my teeth on her throat was incongruous with the slasher flick. Maybe Dracula would air later.

"Why them? You could have just killed me – it was _my_ fault!" Edward's whiny false martyrdom held no purchase with me.

Death? HA! _"Till death do us part,"_ I'd promised, and having been robbed of mine, I refused to grant him his.

"Edward, _love,_ I'm not going to harm you with these pale hands that are no longer works of delicate art. No, I'm not even going to touch you. Just as you never did me, but to finally damn me completely. _I'm going to leave you._"

Slowly, understanding dawned in his ebony eyes.

"You will live in perfect health, _intact_, nursing your traitorous family, knowing your mate, your _creation_, will never see you, hear you or touch you ever again."

He took a step toward me, determined. "I can't let you continue...this..." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed in disgust, viewing the scene I'd set.

"Really? You must have water on the brain if you think you can stop me. I won't be a part of your Cullenary veganism. Not now."

His jaw tightened, and he started to reach for his face but stopped. Worried I'd be happy to pinch the bridge of his nose for him – pinch the fucker right off.

"I will stop you, Bella," he said grimly.

The sea of anger that filled me came to a boil. "Is that a _promise_, Edward?" I mocked with an hysterical laugh. "Like you promised that we'd 'try' to have sex while I was human? That you'd protect the people I cared about, keep me from rampaging and pillaging? Or how about 'you'll never feel pain again'? What lie are you hiding in this new _promise_, Edward? That you really get off on my pain so much that you've found a way to prolong it for eternity?"

_Masochist my ass._ The twisted Adonis staring at me in confused horror was a sadist of the highest order.

"Get off on..._what_? I never wanted to hurt you, Bella! That's why..."

"BULLSHIT! You can't stand there and tell me you didn't know the hell you'd condemned me to, changing me into an eternal virgin. You and your two medical degrees. What did you do, drool your way through gross anatomy?" I snarled.

Still obtusely ignorant, his eyes roamed the room, searching for a response, like he'd just been caught jacking off by Esme. "I don't understand."

If I didn't know better, I would have said he was sweating under the heat lamp of my ire. "You did keep one promise. I'm definitely more durable." I remembered Mikey's failed attempts to rupture the thin membrane that kept me from truly becoming a woman. What would be the male equivalent?

Staring at the designer fly of his artistically worn jeans – and smirking because Alice would have a tough time shopping now – I asked, "Are you circumcised, Edward?"

With trembling hands, it took all the strength he had not to cover his precious pristine penis.

I let my own fingers slide down the front of my jeans, stroking lower and lower while he watched. When sparks of arousal joined the confusion in his eyes, I threw my hand toward him, extending a single, dry, middle finger. "At least my blood won't ever stain the sheets."

He just gawked at me. "I didn't know."

"Don't even..." I could barely see through the red haze my furor had conjured. "You knew – I _told _you, for fucking Christ's sake. I begged, _pleaded _for you to find out for yourself, but you and your old-fashioned 'morals' denied me even a good hand job." I wheeled around, intending to leave before I castrated the son of a bitch, though the thought of carrying his balls around in a jar forever did have merit.

"We can find a way around this, Bella, let me help you. Carlisle..." he stopped.

I laughed out loud this time. "Another doctor who neglected to fulfill his promises. Didn't Daddy tell you about the birds and the bees?" The doorknob wilted in my grip.

Panicked, Edward grabbed my arm, earning a rock-crushing slap. He staggered back, stunned.

"There has to be some way to help you. We'll find a way."

Like a mink overcoat, I insulated myself with burning rage. "There is one solution." I paused, ensuring I had his full attention. "Kill me. I have nothing to live for now. Family, love, sex – everything was burned away when you poisoned me." I tossed him the lighter that had provided the only pleasure I'd experienced in this new, unending life.

How he managed to turn even more pale, holding the silver square, I'd never know.

"I...I can't do that."

"Then this is goodbye, Edward," I said for the last time and pulled the door open.

"I'll find you. You can't kill any more," he swore weakly.

"No? How will you find me? I'm invisible to your little parlor trick." _Sanctimonious prick._

The infinitesimal quiver of his left eye verified I spoke the truth. "True. But I have eyes and ears in every other human. You can't hide for long."

My rage went supernova, and with it, something else. All I wanted was for Edward to hear nothing, to be completely, and totally alone.

Suddenly, impossibly, his face bleached, almost to the point of transparency. "What did you do?" He shook his head and began pacing. When he screwed a finger in his ear – a finger I'd wanted inside me so many times – I knew. While my dad had often used his car keys to dig out molded hills of carrot-colored wax from his his auditory cavities, Edward's finger came out unblemished, unable to wipe clean his mental ears.

"What's the matter, _dearest_? Having trouble hearing?"

His eyes locked on mine as he debated cause and effect of each possible answer. Alone. In silence.

"What have you done to me?"

I was as curious as he, and when the fury wavered, so did the newly found second skin I'd thrown around him.

His hands came up to his ears with a slap when my shield...my fucking _barrier_...was removed.

"All better now?" I crooned on my way out the door. "You'll never see me again," I swore.

Wisely, he didn't follow.

I tracked the news for a week as I crossed the country. The manhunt was on, but the authorities had no idea what they were searching for was far from a man. Edward Cullen's name and photo, along with those of his family, were plastered across TVs, newspapers and magazines everywhere I went. My ugly, distorted, human face was always right next to his, "the girl who was still missing," but my new, immortal face never drew attention. Not that many humans saw it. Those who did certainly never lived to report it.

The Cullens were outcasts among the human population, forced to live the life the despised – secluded, isolated, hated. The life they'd wished on me.

Within a month, I'd learned to manage my thirst enough that I was ready to risk a flight overseas and seek out my new destiny. I had neither the patience nor the desire to swim the Atlantic, and had no qualms in adding thievery to my list of sins. A bank here, a jewelry store there, and I easily funded my travel east.

_Just call me Bonnie. Such a shame that my very own Clyde was such a deceitful cunt. _

An accomplice would have been a most welcome addition to my blossoming plan. Not to fucking mention, _again,_ I was everlastingly pent up with eroticism that had yet to find release!

The pilots who flew the plane made a lovely end-of flight snack. In sight of the lush Italian coast, it was a simple matter to ditch the private jet in the Mediterranean and swim to shore. Mere hours found me strolling down the cobbled walks of Volterra.

Ironically, it was Demetri, his tracking ability nullified, who met me outside the castle.

"My, my, my, you have changed, Bella, _bellezza_," he said by way of greeting, rolling his luscious tongue around my name in his sensual Italian accent. The way he used my moniker as a description made me tingle in all the right places...places that still hadn't been seen to properly yet.

_He looks promising. And gorgeous. _Of my own height, but strapping of build, his nubile hands punctured the space between us, gesticulating as Mediterraneans did. His samples of breath and short exhalations were warm teasers of sun-kissed olive groves and warmed grapevines.

_Not another fucking blond, thank Christ! _

Demetri's excited alizarin eyes were an exorcism, his inhalations pure pontifications on my beauty. With a look, a sigh, a suck, and the strong ply of his hands, he made me new. I became a natural, beautiful demon under his caressing gaze. _ Perhaps there would be fringe benefits to donning the midnight cassock._

"And you haven't changed, have you, Demetri? Would you care to accompany me to your masters?" I fluttered my crimson eyes at him and earned a smirk.

He proffered an elbow, which I took, stroking his solidly sinewed forearm as I did. Remembering Mike's soft Circus Peanut skin that dimpled and scrunched under my touch, I leaned closer to my escort and appreciated his permanent form. Strolling through hallways and passages I only dimly remembered, we approached two gilded doors.

Inside, on thrones that had undoubtedly belonged to the likes of Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn, Aro, Caius, and Marcus sat like a tripe-skinned triptych. Royalty on a dais above their disciples.

Red eyes all turned my direction as we strode through the room, the growing murmur a cresting sea squall that attracted imperious Aro's attention as well.

"Who is this?" he demanded, but then bared his teeth in a sickly carnivorous cavernous grin. "Bella Swan...forgive me..._Cullen_?"

Cullen. My bare ring finger, so recently tangled in Demetri's sleeve, twitched. Swan wasn't any more appropriate. "Just Bella, if you please, Aro. Surnames no longer define me."

Standing at the foot of their ostentatious pedestal, Aro's intense inspection and wide pedophilic grin disgusted me. "Marriage has not been to your liking, dear Bella?"

"My marriage was a sham from the moment it was conceived. I've annulled that union." Like blood drops leaking onto alabaster, a dozen pairs of crimson eyes widened around me, none more dramatically than those residing in Aro's vellum-sheathed face.

"I see. And here you are," he said, joyous anticipation accenting his conspicuous curiosity.

The negotiations began slowly...filled with explanations and posturing. All the while Demetri stayed at my side, seeming to show an allegiance I'd neither earned nor anticipated, and wondered if I could trust.

Nevertheless, I continued to eye him with copious lust.

Others were immediately skeptical. Wee, scrawny, pie-faced Jane was the most vocal of these, the only vampire in the assemblage with the brass balls to question Aro. As much as I hated her before, I respected her strength.

Tiring of the preliminaries, Caius cut through the shit with the scythe of his voice. "What is it you want from us, Bella?"

"I would like to accept the offer Aro extended to me in March, if it still stands." Aro clapped his hands in glee. "Under one condition." _Yes, boys, I'm not as easy as I used to be._

Demetri's lip quirked, sending titillating lightning strikes to the blossoming tips of my hungry tits. _Okay, so I AM easy, but I'm not cheap._

Jane snorted, interrupting my burgeoning fantasies. "You want to join us? We can all see your only purpose is to protect yourself from the retribution of your spurned family."

I laughed in her moony, prepubescent face. "Thank you, dear, for your concern, I'm more than capable of protecting myself." I patted her shining dark little match girl's locks with the indulgence of an elder. "No, my request is for another's life. Edward's."

Aro's wizened, almost hairless eyebrow rose. "So you _do _still love him."

"Far from it." I lowered my voice and unintentionally tightened my grip on Demetri's brawny arm. "Edward is nothing but a manipulative, self-serving prick. He created me for his own pleasure, while depriving me of the same. His payment for that cowardly act will be to live, forever alone, without comfort of his mother's heart or the reassurance of his father's touch to ease him." As befitted the self-serving cockblocker extraordinaire.

Edward's remembered threat of trying to prevent me from leaving him stirred the anger that made my armor elastic.

Seizing the opportunity to demonstrate yet another benefit to adding me to the Volturi's ranks, I continued. "And I can offer you something – protection for your mind." Offering myself as a mental condom completed my sexually stifled existence.

Caius stiffened and raised his hand to Aro, wishing to keep his thoughts private. _No_, I thought, and threw my invisible cloak between the self-proclaimed brothers.

Aro touched his brother, once, twice, a third time before turning to me. I strained under the weight of my ethereal weapon, and when Aro smiled, I released it.

"Very impressive, Bella. And in what? Just a month's practice?" The greedy glint returned. "Would an edict satisfy your condition? The threat of unending punishment to any who harm your ex-husband's head, perhaps?"

A head I'd had the pleasure of carrying off! "That would be perfect."

"There's just one other matter before we finalize your indoctrination," Caius said, waving a finger at the door. "Your loyalty shall be sworn in blood."

A single beating heart entered the room and crept up behind me. _It_ smelled lovely.

"Gianna," Aro purred. "It's time for your promotion." He watched with an eagle's eye, surely doubting my crimson eyes were only an artifact of my newly-born age.

The dark-haired woman circled and took her place in front of me, her chin high. "Thank you, Master."

"Bella, welcome to the Volturi."

Gianna froze, shock pouring off her in waves of delicious hormonal release.

I smiled, enjoying Caius' disbelieving sneer.

"Thank you, Master," I replied, then added her life, just like her sweetly mimicked gratitude, to mine.

_**~~Quatre**_**: Dead-ended~~**

My lover, sweet salacious Demetri, sheltered me within this unchaste castle. He'd welcomed me to my new home and offered himself that very first day, answering my pitiful sexual laments with a kiss so deep his tongue licked my g-spot from the inside.

Demetri became my companion, my guide, my advisor, and my instructor, teaching me about my vampire mind, my immortal misplaced talent, and most especially my voracious saturnine body.

We fed together from humans delivered in a timely manner to the ting ting Heidi's dinner bell, on occasion each of us drinking from the same victim like two sweethearts sharing a malt at the five and dime.

He spent endless hours helping me master my shield so I could make of it an interloper at will. As a reward for finally letting him sense my being for the first time, his lips touched mine...and not those I drank with. God, what that man could do with his mouth almost made me happy I'd remained unbreached.

_Almost_.

It was these lessons I craved, would weep for, had I but one tear. Putting the Kama Sutra to shame, Demetri demonstrated inhuman patience as he showed me carnal carniverous, ardorous and arduous pleasures that never gained true purchase but had me crying out in such release, in almighty thunderous orgasms that the windows shook and ancient stony mortar crumbled!

He had been everywhere but fully seated within me.

I was finally sated, nonetheless.

My divine, delicious, devilishly talented man.

I repaid him in a thousand erotic ways, but one simple, non-sexual act was what he treasured most. Rather than enrobing him in flesh, I cuddled him in my invisible, impenetatrable hug, letting my relentless lover experience aloneness for the first time.

Decadent decades passed while I feasted my face on humans and Demetri fashioned his mouth and fingers into the most pleasurable of toys..._making a feast of me._

Aro encouraged us lovers, his aim to keep us happy and complacent and just under his thumb. Keeping tabs on the Cullens, he and his Brothers Grimm never let my glib, ingratiating _famille _too close to the palace's fortified walls.

But neither did he decimate them.

Caught in limbo, the Cullens were rotting while I lay out on plush beds, distended by a glut of blood and lax with libidinous gratification.

Only one goddamn cuntnundrum of this everlasting suck-hole of a life remained. My ex was getting restless. And close. Demetri warned me when Edward arrived on the Continent, and again when he touched Italian soil.

Eventually my cowardly creator made an appearance. And consummate cockblocker he was, his timing could not have been worse.

Caught up in a heaving mass of wriggling flesh, swarthy limbs to my creamy legs, long hair draped over my inner thighs, carven craving lips against my pussy, sheets and duvets and mountainous pillows pushed aside, wet love spilled about like our moans and teasing kisses and Demetri's diamond-stiff, arrow-straight, lavender-tinted cock two seconds away from the only sheath it would know, _my mouth_...we were interrupted by shrill rapping at our door.

"Bella?"

"_Ma vaffanculo!" _Demetri cursed, his heavy breath tickling my greedy, needy clit. In a flurry of silk and groans, his resplendent pecker was replaced by a gentle peck...of his lips. Gripping my hair, he panted, "_Dolcezza, _apologies." Wrapping a sumptuous sheet about his lithe hips, he rose and opened the door a crack. "This had better be good, Jane_._"

I squirmed, unfullfilled, but shoved my own desires aside at Jane's appearance. Physically younger than my nineteen human years, my sister virgin lacked the maturity to appreciate sex, let alone participate in it. Whatever she and Aro did behind his soundproof doors was one mystery I had no desire to unravel. I pitied her, knowing exactly from where her torturous talent emanated.

That didn't mean I wanted her here, now, though.

"Bella is wanted in the tower. She has a very _important_ visitor." With a trail of titters and trip tropping flat soles, the interloper left us to get ready.

"Perfect timing, Edward," I muttered, my narrowed eyes fixed on Demetri's tight, perfect ass peeking out from the drooping sheet. I still needed to cum.

I released Demetri from his mental isolation slowly as we dressed, letting it widen and settle around the lobby as I waited for the confirmation of what I already knew.

"Yes, _carissima _, it's him." He fingered my hair, elegantly braiding it while he peppered my neck with kisses. "No other Cullens accompanied him," he whispered, answering my second, silent question.

"Let's get this over with." Before opening the door, I invaded his mouth one last time, licking the sugary venom from his teeth while teasing his crotch with a swivel of my hips. "We have much better things to do with our hours."

The trip to the throne room took longer than necessary; Demetri pulled me into every alcove we passed and assaulted me in some lecherous way. I assured him Edward meant less than nothing to me, but it wasn't until I threatened to keep Demetri's tasty meaty cock in my pocket until the meeting was over that he stopped.

Like I needed more reminders of what Edward had stolen from me before looking upon his sorry ass.

Arranged in a circle, seven more of my cloaked comrades in arms waited in the center of the throne room. Only two cassocks were as dark as mine – Jane's and Alec's. Even my bedmate's was a shade lighter. My success would repel Edward, should I reveal myself to him. But I had no intention of letting me see my face again. _Ever_.

We all raised our hoods, hearing the quiet slap of his leather soles against the marble floor. Nine faceless judges waited as the door opened.

He knew I was here. The mental silence smothering him had tipped him off long before he crossed this threshold. He strode into the center of the ring, his head cocked with false confidence, but the toll of the passing decades couldn't be hidden.

His bald head and singed eyebrows spoke of his feeble attempts to exit the existence he'd cursed me with. The ugly sight warmed my granite heart. The scent of burning Cullen flesh had long since left my nostrils, but the suffering...the _age_...I saw in his face gave me almost orgasmic pleasure. A different aroma wafted in with him – pungent, putrid...petroleum based. Remnants of his many failed suicides, no doubt.

Edward looked around the room, his face stoic. Not knowing which cloak I lurked under, nor which to address, he focused on Aro's empty throne. Demetri had first sensed my heartless ex-husband's travels days ago, giving me the chance to prepare accordingly. It was a debt I owed my Palermo paramour – one I planned on repaying in elaborate fashion.

Though I'd never truly love him, Demetri always worshiped my body with gentleness and reverance. After spurning Edward again, for infinity, and leaving him to wallow in the tortured eternity he'd crafted for himself, I would open my legs to Demetri's shaft. I'd suffer the 'human experience' of first sex – just once. The agony of true intercourse was worth such a prize as Edward's torment. My tutor, my partner had more than earned such completion.

It was my coital consort who stepped forward, lowering his hood. The ancients hadn't bothered to attend – Edward was far beneath their notice any longer.

"What do you want, Edward?" Demetri growled, anxious to return to the boudoir.

Not surprisingly, Edward didn't flinch. "I want nothing," he said, inspecting the cloaked congress again.

"You won't find her unless she wants to be found," Demetri smirked. Hide and seek was one of his favorite games, especially when I let him find me moist and naked and hidden between gowns of lace and silk and satin in ancient mirrored oaken wardrobes.

"_Hmpf_." Edward straightened the invisible burden weighing on his slumping shoulders. "Was marking me as Cain her price for this?" He waved his hand at the unseen layer blocking him from the other minds in the room.

"Hardly a price, it was a gift the Volturi were happy to bestow." Casting a wayward glance at Chelsea, Demetri smiled. When Edward followed his gaze and hope flashed across his face, I wanted to laugh.

Demetri's grin widened to Cheshire cat proportions, seeing how pliable Edward was. "I gave Bella my own gifts," he purred, adjusting his ample crotch.

Edward said nothing, displaying none of the jealousy I'd hoped was burning inside him. He took a deep breath, unknowingly exhaling directly at me. Instead of suffocating me with his sickly-sweet honeyed lilac breath, the foul carbon smell strengthened. _What is he planning?_

Jane must have caught a whiff of the odious odor – her snort a high-pitched whistle of disgust.

"Jane," Edward said with a leer.

Dropping her hood, Jane aimed her dangerous gaze at my wretched spouse. A tinderbox ready to be set alight, her eyes didn't waver from him.

Affecting apathy, Edward nodded to her twin, identifying Alec by his comparable height. "Per your master, I'm not to be harmed."

"Not permanently," she qualified, her lips slowly curling into her trademark sadistic smile.

Demetri raised a mollifying hand, knowing he was playing with fire, whether real or imagined. "I beg your indulgence, Jane."

Alec shook his head once, and the cherub-turned-torturer frowned. _Flamus interruptus._

Ignoring Jane's fuming, Edward withdrew a single folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and held it out. "This is for her."

Demetri paused, not sure whether to take the note or not, then snatched it. With an exaggerated sigh of boredom, he asked, "Is that it?"

"Almost." With that, Edward revealed a lighter in his right hand. It struck me as familiar, with an eerily memorable sporting goods logo stuck to the side. Everyone cringed back – Jane and Alec most dramatically as they sped out to the door – and Demetri automatically reached toward me. The movement wasn't lost on Edward, and he stared into the blackness of my hood as he blew across the flame, his kerosene infused breath creating a blowtorch.

The flames reached toward me, then suddenly reversed course as Edward then inhaled the inferno. He'd filled his lungs and stomach with the fuel and its vapors – he'd finally figured out how to kill himself!

As his insides combusted with the backdraft, mine also flared. "NO!" I screamed. "You can't DIE, you fucking bastard!"

His mouth stretched wide, unable to release the scream that the fire had stolen. With eyes that truly smoldered, the last thing I saw reflected in the shimmering liquid bullion was my face.

Like an imploded building, he fell to his knees; his chest, then head, disintegrating onto his burning jeans with a whispered _pffft_.

His limbs took the longest to be consumed, having fallen away from the rest of the powdery pile that reeked of burned sugar. I would have spit on his ashes but that it would've only sped his demise.

With only his feet and shoes left to flame, Demetri silently offered me the note.

For a few smoky milliseconds I contemplated the scrap. Manipulator that Edward was, I knew he assumed I'd never look at it, and for that brief instant I wanted to see, to desecrate his cursed memory one last time. But no, the fucker had probably hoped to trick me into reading it. Conflicted, I took the note from Demetri's fingers and opened it.

It was blank.

Spitting on the paper, I swore at myself. He'd never had access to my thoughts, and his final act was to deny me his. Ball-sucking cunt-tease!

The wanna-be testament exploded when it hit the last lick of tinder rising from what was once Edward.

"It's over," I growled, crushing the charred Newton's Outfitters logo into the dull heliotrope mound with the heel of my shoe. Edward, the vampire Malatov Cocktail. Ever the drama whore, I wondered just how many years it had taken him to literally cook up this scheme. But now I had an option I never could have conceived on my own.

Exiting the smoky charred nave, I understood. Edward had given me the one thing he could. In the burning paper, the kerosene and fire, he'd provided me a way out. Death, on my terms.

Such a thoughtful gift...I should show a little gratitude. But in showing me his fiery exit from this immortal world, he'd also slammed the door in my face.

As a human I'd convinced him he had a soul; as a vampire I'd felt that most precious part of me ripped away, piece by undead piece. But if he were somehow right...if Edward was somehow waiting for me on the other side...

I'd endure the most heinous torture before I joined that two-faced bastard in hell.

_For fucking ever._

Taking Demetri's hand, I stared into his ruby eyes and smiled. "Let's go, baby. I have something special for you."

* * *

**~~Snark **_**cackle**_** *POP*! Review please, Bella's **_**gagging**_** to hear what you think.  
Oh, **_**hang on**_**, I think that's Demetri's luscious man meat she's working over. Who said there was no HEA?~~**


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